Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

Furious_E said:

In reply to AWSX1686 :

You ever deal with CR's in Newville? They're an indy shop that deals exclusively with Bimmers, really cool guys too. Might be worth giving them a shout to help sourcing parts, they usually have a few parts cars on hand.

I've been there once, my buddy got a car off of them. I'll shoot them a message to see if they'd have anything, I had kinda forgot about them. 

I found a whole rear for $600, with 99k miles but it's a 4 hour drive each way, and at 99k miles it's a bit of a gamble. I've already had so much bad luck on this one I'm hesitant to gamble. We'll see if CR's has anything. 

Dear wife, I know you're not feeling 100% right now, the morning sickness is a huge PITA.

That said, when you mention that we should send a message to the advice Nurse about the kid throwing up a few times over the past few days when the zofram wears off and I agree and then hand you your phone?  I kinda expect you to message the nurse while I clean up the mess on the kitchen floor that you can't get near because it could make you sick too, not go and start viewing videos on Facebook.

Especially while my right arm, shoulder and side of my neck are all but locked up and providing stabbing pains while I'm holding the kid in my good arm to keep her out of the mess and cleaning everything up and emptying the trash, etc.

At least, could you watch the kiddo a bit so that I could take care of the mess?

Sigh, thank goodness for tennis balls, I was able to work out some of the knots in my shoulder using one and an empty wall, but I'm still cranky.

In reply to Stefan :

Yes. This. 

AWSX1686 said:

Furious_E said:

In reply to AWSX1686 :

You ever deal with CR's in Newville? They're an indy shop that deals exclusively with Bimmers, really cool guys too. Might be worth giving them a shout to help sourcing parts, they usually have a few parts cars on hand.

I've been there once, my buddy got a car off of them. I'll shoot them a message to see if they'd have anything, I had kinda forgot about them. 

I found a whole rear for $600, with 99k miles but it's a 4 hour drive each way, and at 99k miles it's a bit of a gamble. I've already had so much bad luck on this one I'm hesitant to gamble. We'll see if CR's has anything. 

Boom! Forgot about this one I spotted a few weeks ago. 

Furious_E said:

AWSX1686 said:

Furious_E said:

In reply to AWSX1686 :

You ever deal with CR's in Newville? They're an indy shop that deals exclusively with Bimmers, really cool guys too. Might be worth giving them a shout to help sourcing parts, they usually have a few parts cars on hand.

I've been there once, my buddy got a car off of them. I'll shoot them a message to see if they'd have anything, I had kinda forgot about them. 

I found a whole rear for $600, with 99k miles but it's a 4 hour drive each way, and at 99k miles it's a bit of a gamble. I've already had so much bad luck on this one I'm hesitant to gamble. We'll see if CR's has anything. 

Boom! Forgot about this one I spotted a few weeks ago. 

Ohh. I saw that one on Facebook, and he hadn't messaged me back yet. I just sent him a text though...

Claro is the worst company ever. I though at&t were bad, but these fools are worse. 

Ignoring the BS they did and didn’t do, but we are now canceling the account of my dead FIL, and it’s taking forever. Over an hour at a counter. Is it that hard to hit a cancel button??

And the refund is a check to my dead FIL. Claro knows he is dead, otherwise we can’t cancel the account. But they send the check anyway, and then expect the family to come back to the store and deal with the paperwork. 

All they are good at is taking money. No good phones, no good internet, no service at all. 

Berkeley you Saturn and your goddamn berkeleying abortion that is the Astra. More like Pain-In-The-Astra. Everything on these is designed to be as difficult as possible. You can't even talk to it with a standard GM Tech II scan tool. Instead, you have to render a Tech II useless on every other vehicle and swap out the internal card and the cable and make it Astra-specific. And even when you do that, it still won't talk to some years of them. And doing ANYTHING, requires you to program modules with a scan tool. So now we have these piles of junk coming out of the woodwork to replace the Takata-installed steering wheel claymores and are having all sorts of issues.

Had one come in for the airbag and to have a customer-installed new OEM radio programmed. Attempt to learn the radio, requires a scan tool, can't do it. Replace the air bag, then the air bag light comes on for no reason. Try to scan codes, Tech II won't talk to it. Cajole a Snap-On Solus to read the codes and learn that for whatever reason, the connectors for the airbag aren't working properly, despite using the utmost care when disconnecting and reconnecting them. Order a new clock spring (an ordeal in itself, because the supply of them is dried up), replace it (what a treat that is, you have to swap the multifunction stalks, JUST the stalks on) and the airbag light goes out but now it won't start because the clock spring also controls the theft deterrent system for some reason. Go to reprogram the theft, oh, it's a FORTY-EIGHT step process that, you guessed it, requires the Astra-configured Tech II. 

My service manager just declared, "The next Astra that comes through the door, I'm telling the owner to berkeley off"

I'm not sure if it's something on my end, Amazon, or gmail, but the flood of spam and phishing emails that come through my spam filter after EVERY order from Amazon is enough to make me want to quit when combined with the new 6 days till delivery despite "free 2 day prime shipping" they've been pulling since October. 

In reply to NickD :

Im so glad you talked me out of the astra i wanted to buy.

Mandatory rant: i should have checked the bulb socket. A bad ground from the cocket to body just cost mr 5 hours of dash dissassemly and reassembly. 

Dusterbd13 said:

In reply to NickD :

Im so glad you talked me out of the astra i wanted to buy.

Oh, that's right, it was you who was looking at buying one. I knew there was someone on here, but I couldn't remember who

RevRico said:

I'm not sure if it's something on my end, Amazon, or gmail, but the flood of spam and phishing emails that come through my spam filter after EVERY order from Amazon is enough to make me want to quit when combined with the new 6 days till delivery despite "free 2 day prime shipping" they've been pulling since October. 

I think it is your end. I use Amazon and gmail and I do not get flooded with spam when I make purchases from Amazon

Long term power outages. It’s been the most part of 4 months here in Ponce, and there are still big sections of neighborhoods without power  

and the intersections are crazy bad. 

It should not take this long to restore power, let alone rebuild major intersection lights. 

In reply to Alfadriver.

Problem number one. My brother works for one of the major utility companies that restore power after storms. They tried to send crews down to help, but there are "considerations" for working with the local governments. They gave up. The company that was awarded the contract was fired a month ago. ????. The company that got the contract is questionable at best and they hired the first contractor to complete the work. There are "issues" with bringing in additional contractors and personnel. So about 1/3rd the required manpower and equipment on the ground.  

Number two. There are no materials available. Last I heard (a few weeks ago) there were 25000 power poles headed to Haiti. That's about 10% of the number needed. Between Matthew and Irma, all the stockpiled power poles were gone. Used up. There are none in the USA to be had. Period. That also goes for transformers, cross arms, and all the other assorted hardware needed to transmit power. All power suppliers and utilities carry stockpiles for these events and then share with competitors as needed to get the power turned back on. Stockpiles are enough for two major events. Not three. Unfortunately, Haiti did not have much material on hand. Manufacturers are scrambling to produce the materials needed but that takes time. 

The HVAC in my building is old, runs on dirt and duct tape and apparently has 2 settings: Hell and Antarctica.

Every time someone tries to get something done about it, we get the same answer from the "repair" guys.

"It's old and they don't want us to spend any money on it because the building is getting torn down."

Yeah, in TWO YEARS!

Meanwhile, it's put on another layer, take off another layer, repeat, repeat, repeat.

mad_machine said:

RevRico said:

I'm not sure if it's something on my end, Amazon, or gmail, but the flood of spam and phishing emails that come through my spam filter after EVERY order from Amazon is enough to make me want to quit when combined with the new 6 days till delivery despite "free 2 day prime shipping" they've been pulling since October. 

I think it is your end. I use Amazon and gmail and I do not get flooded with spam when I make purchases from Amazon

I concur. And, to rub it in some more, I typically get my deliveries the next day if I order early in the morning. And for a double rub in, if I order early Friday morning, about 2/3 of the time I get my order on Saturday.

Work has been dead this week, normally it wouldnt be a rant because im getting paid for doing nothing but man does the day drag on. We usually average 25 cars a day. This is crazy

In reply to Toyman01 :

True, but we also keep hearing of stuff suddenly being found. 

This should not be like the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc, this stuff is pretty big and hard to lose. 

In reply to alfadriver :

This isn't a government storage facility where you pull up a inventory list. This stuff is sitting in substations and power houses all over the country and is owned by construction companies and utilities, not the government. They are going to take care of their customers first. Only then will they be willing to ship the stuff 1000 miles away for somebody else's customer. They are also going to retain a certain amount for emergencies at home. Ice storms will take down power lines just as fast as hurricanes. 

But that's a moot point. Without the manpower to install the materials, it doesn't matter how fast they get there. And that is a political problem in another country. 

In reply to Toyman01 :

What other country?  I’m in the US. 

Besides, power is a utility, supposedly better shares among all. And companies have shown that they are happy to share in other states. 

I agree that the local politics suck. But that does not fully excuse the less than satisfactory response from the central government in Washington. 

My dad is a plumber by trade and a decent mechanic. But he absolutely hates modern cars. All of them. In this context "modern" is defined as anything new enough to have EFI. It's not that he can't learn, it's that he refuses to, and refuses to understand that systems he is comfortable i.e. brakes and the like, are not all the same as a 1970 k10.

There is a Ford focus that has been serving my family for about 8 years now. I love the car and intend to buy it from my parents as soon as I have room in the stable, until then it is my mom's dd. for a long time now it has been in need of a rear wheel bearing. After convincing the old man to buy a bearing about six months ago I thought the problem had been remedied. Not so. I drove the car last week and the bearing shouted at me the whole time. "You really should replace that bearing, the wheel is about to fall off." to which he replies "the opposing bearing will keep it from falling off" "There is no opposing bearing... nevermind, just try to fix it." This is literally a half hour job. I did the other side a few years ago; I know.

Yesterday I go visit and the focus is up on stands and the rear wheels off. Good sign, I think. Well, turns out the bearing failed in a big way, on the highway in an area with sketchy phone coverage.

Now I have been enlisted, involuntarily, to press the remains of the bearing out of the drum/hub and probably get the other remains of the bearing off the spindle. This would have been a 30 minute job last week.

To a coworker: "No dude, you are NOT hiding your flatulations with those stupid loud fake sneezes."

In reply to alfadriver :

It might as well be.The levels of corruption are impressive. Here are some of the power problems. Linky Some of the other issues. Linky

The local government has the primary responsibility. Until they get their act together...

WildScotsRacingCampbellCougarSeed said:

To a coworker: "No dude, you are NOT hiding your flatulations with those stupid loud fake sneezes."

"Dude! What's wrong?  Your sneezes smell like E36 M3!"

For Christmas I got tickets to see Gilbert Gottfried. It starts at 9:00, 6 hours after I’m supposed to finish.  Of course everything went to E36 M3 this afternoon so I may not make it. I just pulled out into Friday night rush hour traffic and the news is saying there’s also an overturned school bus on the way.. 

My wife took my 9 year old sons for haircuts. They have some weird E36 M3 with bangs now and i really want too shave them bald. Now i know how my dad felt when i got weird ass haircuts.